July 26, 2004
picayune gazette bee plain dealer
7/26/04
My buddy Salem asked an interesting question about Kerry and the recent poll showing that only 30% of Americans "felt like they knew who John Kerry was." He was flabbergasted that anyone with a modicum of clue would have at least a small understanding of who he is (Vietnam vet, war hero, Senator, etc.) but to me, it's a little more depressing.
First off, the poll itself is its own leading question. If you ask if you "know" somebody, it forces you to contemplate all things you don't know about them. Further, in this case, the race for the presidency has been mostly about Bush, since he's such a wildly incompetent dumbass. We "know" who he is, that's for goddamn sure.
But such a question, put forth by the media, is simply the evidence of hunger for stories and manufactured spectacle. Like I've already moaned before, the genesis of a 24-hour news cycle would have been considered TOTALLY FREAKIN' INSANE in the 70s when I was a kid. Not enough happened! Not enough happens now, so they have to create it.
This unquenched thirst for "news" has made everyone egregiously sloppy; I'm surprised it took so long for the Jayson Blairs and Stephen Glasses of the world to be outed. How about a few examples of Terrible Journalism just in the last week?
Okay - this article from USAToday has the headline "Some Hybrids Not As Reliable As Gas Models." It says that "The discrepancies can be dramatic... Toyota and Honda hybrids reported twice as many engine problems as owners of gas-engine Toyotas and Hondas... reliability doubts could make Americans reluctant to buy vehicles that could cut fuel bills and U.S. dependence on imported oil. Reliability problems also can make vehicles worth less as used cars."
Which should scare all of you away from buying a hybrid car – after all, it's going to strand you in the desert, right? Unfuckingbelievable. What the article doesn't make plain is that these are the 2001 model hybrids, a car made five years ago when the technology was brand new.
That's like grabbing an Atari and playing "Yars' Revenge" and then complaining about the graphics. Needless to say, the hybrid technology has exploded in the last five years, making the 2004 Prius the Motor Trend Fucking CAR OF THE YEAR™. But that story isn't as interesting.
Let's move on...
Look at this review of "Sight Unseen," the play I discussed yesterday:
The affair [between the two leads] ended badly when the self-centered Jonathan dumped [Patricia] in his quest for fame and fortune... Nick [the husband] is surly in his reception of Jonathan, whom he suspects of wanting to renew his affair with Patricia, a suspicion happily shared by Patricia who invites Jonathan to stay overnight... It turns out that Jonathan's real purpose in seeking out Patricia after 15 years of separation is to obtain one of his early paintings... he tries to sneak it out of the house before dawn, but she catches him in his thievery.
Okay, if you saw the play, and paid attention to the plot, you'd know that EVERY SINGLE STATEMENT ABOVE is FALSE. Laurie, George, Jon, Catherine, everybody who saw "Sight Unseen" will agree that this reviewer either didn't see the play or has a kindergarten grasp of storytelling.
More? How about the SHEER ARBITRARINESS of reporting? Take a look at these sets of absurdly paradoxical headlines from Google News:
All I know is this: one of the things that helped cure me of my mainstream media-fueled anxiety was to read the news on Sunday. Ever notice that nothing ever happens on Sunday, even though in most of the world, it's already Monday? That's because nobody's on the internet or watching CNN or Fox News. When I realized that they made everything up as they went along, I felt a lot better.
You know, in a sad sort of way.
I do, however, love these headlines – standing up to terrorists IS a total downer
Sorry, I just don't see anything obviously wrong with that hybrid article. I think it would have been worthy to mention, as you did, that there's reason to expect the 2004 models will be more reliable than the ones of the news story, but really I think that's a point for a manufacturer's spokesperson or some expert source to have made, and not the reporter. If some source did make that assertion and if the reporter left it out, no biggie, I say. Also, car-of-the-yearness is independent of "reliability"--of which the benchmark standard measurement takes 3 years to make. It's news when evidence emerges that a beloved new technology, which has been celebrated by experts, is less trustworthy than the plain old stuff. It's weak evidence, and it might very well be misleading, but it's the standard sort of evidence brought to bear in evaluating cars, so it's interesting. You wanna censor science? Maybe USA Today's hyrbid coverage on the whole has been too narrow or has lacked balance (I don't know--it's certainly plausible) and perhaps hybrids do deserve more rah-rah reporting (to my mind they do). But the only agenda I want my paper to have (barring instructions on how to build a dirty bomb, which my next door neighbor's teenager might read) is to keep me abreast of the news. That means the bad news as well as the good.
Of course, I agree that the people who write the headlines (i.e. the copyeditors, not the reporters) should all be lined up and shot.